"But.... I Don't Wanna: Music Teachers Struggling with Hip-Hop Music Literature in Their Classroom"

#HipHopMusicEd

Educators are constantly asked, by students, to play or perform music that is outside of their comfort zone. "...but, I don't wanna.." is typically the response. How do you bridge the gap that exist between the teacher's opinion of what is acceptable and what is acceptable in the eyes of the student? Educators, we must remember to met our students where they are and embrace some of the elements that they "like" in order to work together to critically analyze and create a full experience for them in our classrooms.

When students give these request for more current or contemporary music in class, listen to them and please remember what music they probably hear at home, on the train (subway) and in the car over the course of their week. These request are coming from your audience, and my reflect their existence (understanding). It's a request that should be listened to, and contains a valid message of "I'm interested in what we're doing, but would love to play something I know and like". They are inviting us into their space of inquiry, the pre-teen or teenage life. The secret life of teenagers, in which they choose to share or not to share their feelings. Teachers, please...take it where you can get it, and engage in dialogue about the music they are asking you to play in class as part of one of your lessons. To share, is an awesome "in" moment for teachers and students. You can use that request as a way to co-construct a real list of rap and/or hip-hop songs that you both can agree is acceptable for classroom use. Create a rubric, maybe even co-construct this together, and from there that can become something that is applied directly to the rest of the music (literature) that is used in your music classroom.

Co-constructing a space together is actually an aesthetic of hip-hop music and culture. The beauty of the art, that is hip-hop, comes from diverse elements coming together to create something groovy, that lock in well together. To work alongside your students to compose and name the world in which you live-in together is something that Brooks & Brooks would call, the action constructivism or the space of inquiry, a constructivist space. To make something, to create, is part of what Dewey would say is nature. Expand upon it and take advantage of this opportunity to make something, construct or share with your students. This is a great opportunity to engage in something positive with our students, and to expand the borders of understanding in your classroom space.

Music educators your lack of experience w/ and/or interest in popular American music limits not only your experience, but that of your students in the musicking classroom.

As I get older I am starting to understand that the only limits that exist in my classroom are those that I and my students create. I am currently researching the preferences and dispositions of preservice teachers and the education programs they are involved in. It's important that we all understand that teacher orientation is typically dictated by teacher pedagogy and methods courses they are engaged during study. This is sets the foundation for what many teachers (professionals) will use as their teaching premise for the rest of their careers. The more limited, or shallow, these types of musical experiences that student-teachers have, the more likely they are to replicate them in their future teaching. This is evident in the limited selection of performance formats found throughout American music classrooms.

Teaching programs should in theory, be a place where student-teachers muddle through diverse experiences that are suppose (purposed) to help bring the unknown into the space of the known (Dewey). We have to stop replicating what we think is unequivocal permanent fact, and start trying to meet our students where they are and engage in relevant learning activities. Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogies are a wonderful set of approaches to bringing in relevance into the music classroom. Let's help children find relevance in our classrooms by we ourselves, as teachers, tackling difficult topics with hip-hop pedagogies (practice, lens, bridge). Most teachers only replicate the experiences they have had in their learning experiences and rarely move outside of this paradigm. So, how do we repair this rigid range (limited) of experiences?

Let's take the clarion call of such educators, ethnomusicologists and scholars like Adam Kruse, Barbara Lindquist, Randall Allsup, Lucy Green, and many others that ask us to question the familiar, and engage in a search of the practices of popular music and musicians. There is so much rich, diverse and important topics that can be uncovered in working with popular music. The first step is that teachers con not simply stay in the lane of practitioners, but have to also move into the lane of researcher. Practicing these popular forms of music can have deep benefits, and can help us gain so much through critical reflection. Students are worried about you being cool because you are authentic, they are in your class to learn and grow. They relate to you because of the level of honesty and how you share the ways in which you came to understand the topic. Reading a chapter and simply sharing this isn't enough. Popular music forms have to be taught in various formats in undergraduate programs in order for change to happen. Let's start now, to honor the great music of America. Let's celebrate the J-Dilla's, Stevie Wonder's, Stephen Foster's, Irving Berlin's, Kanye West's, Eminem's, Katie Perry's, James Brown's, Johnny Cash's, Wille Nelson's, Louis Jordan's, Miles Davis', Wynton Marsalis', Pete Seegers, and Kendrick Lamar's of the music world. If we start with our teachers we can open up spaces of inquiry in our music classrooms that have never really existed before. Let's tackle these forms, genres and topics.

I have been reviewing the literature on hip-hop pedagogy and its uses in the music classroom, and many of them see the use of hip-hop music and culture primarily as a means to foster intertextual and subjectivities within the domain of literacy, the written word. However, there are a few scholars that have written about the potential for the music's use within music education. These music education scholars are Greg Dimitriadis and Adam Kruse. There a plethora of scholars (Akom, Morrell, Duncan-Andrade, Emdin, Soderman, Folkestead, etc) from a variety of educational areas that have written about hip-hop's pedagogical uses in the classroom, but the focus of these articles are main centered on the cultural relevance and understandings that are created when teachers and students interact with hip-hop. I am interested in finding what is happening in the music classrooms all-around America in regard to the uses of hip-hop music and culture. Why is there a huge gap in the literature in regard to the uses of hip-hop in the music classroom, and what does this mean for its future uses?

I started to dig further and found that my initial response was one of disdain toward to the academy for not valuing the music that I so loved. I later started to wonder why there really wasn't any data reflecting a serious study of the music's effects on music education. Where was the empirical data? Where were the studies demonizing or reaffirming the power of the music within the walls of k-12 or post secondary school? I search and I searched and found that the researchers writings mainly reflect the experiences and interests that they have. I know anecdotally that there are teachers all across American that use hip-hop music culture in their classrooms, but no one has really taken the time to report it. Most practitioners are busy doing, and most researchers are busy experiencing and chronicling the outcomes. There are areas that are not communicated by either group. Hip-hop is one of those areas. Sam Seidel wrote a powerful book called "Hip-Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education" which recounts the story of a successful arts program in Minnesota that uses the study of the culture as a means to educate youth. So, I know that if there is one model for the infusion of hip-hop into music education there must be at least one more. As the demographic of the teaching forces changes over the next 20 years, we must be prepared to change the types of ensemble formats that pre-service teachers have access to while in college. The average 18-25 year old student is part of the post-hip-hop generation, and even if there are not huge fans of the music or culture, they have never none a time when the music did not exist. I often relate to those who know me well, that I didn't know any Beatles music until I was in the early thirties, because the experiences and music I had at school and home were heavily influenced by Stevie Wonder, Andre Crouch and many jazz legends. So, what would my conception of relatable music and musical experiences have been if there was band or ensemble at school that was part of my enculturation as a educator? I can also recount my visit to Dillard School of the Arts in Fort Lauderdale, FL. They have recording arts program headed by one Israel Charles has developed a great program around the use of music technology to do project based learning. There have been several successful hip-hop artist that have come out of the program, as well as musicians and lovers of music that have graduated from that program, myself included.

So, how do music educators use hip-hop in their classrooms? According to Kruse (2014) and Dimitriadis (2009) there are currently three forms of Hip-hop pedagogies that have been identified by scholars 1) hip-hop as a bridge 2) hip-hop as a lens and 3) hip-hop as a practice. Each of these can be used in the musicking classroom (Chris Small). I recently shared a google survey with music educators of all levels, via social media. Link provided here -----> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ku6DGBwBl3VLKg6LSENP3iiuE_OVbjCVbkJcTmv17yk/viewform?usp=send_form Please feel free to fill this out, if you are a teacher, past or present, and have or are interested in using hip-hop music/culture and its pedagogies in your classrooms. When I am finished collecting data in the upcoming days, I will share the results of what teachers are or are not doing with hip-hop.

P.S. I have been using the term "cultural appropriation" as of late and will start using another term to express my wishes for the use of hip-hop music in education. I have recently seen the term "musical exchange" and think this is